A conventional casket has a casket shell adapted to receive the remains of a deceased, and a casket lid or pair of lids pivoted to the shell. The shell of a conventional casket has a pair of side walls, a pair of end walls, and a bottom wall. The side walls and end walls of a conventional casket shell are about 15.5 inches high. Accordingly, there is a significant amount of raw material required to manufacture a conventional casket shell. Moreover, a conventional casket shell requires a number of manufacturing steps, many of which are manual due to the fact that the particular manufacturing step does not lend itself well to automation. Thus, the manufacture of a conventional casket shell is labor intensive.
One commonly employed process currently utilized to form sheet metal casket shells is as follows: Two side panels are blanked from a coil of sheet steel (or other suitable sheet metal), and two end panels are blanked from the coil. Next, both side panels and both end panels are stamped to form the desired profile of the shell side walls and end walls. Next, the four walls are loaded onto a weld fixture and welded together by welders, as are the flange miter corners, and finally the four welds are ground smooth with grinders. At some point along the way a bottom wall or panel is welded to the side walls and the end walls. The corners of a rounded corner casket shell are typically formed as a part of the end panels, whereas the corners of a square corner casket shell are formed by joining the side walls and ends walls at miters. Thus, the weld lines where the side panels are welded to the end panels on rounded corner casket shells are located on the ends of the side panels, thus being visible when the casket shell is viewed from the front (or rear).
This current process of forming sheet metal casket shells includes a number of disadvantages. Each panel requires at least one blanking operation along with one or two stamping operations. The sheets must be loaded into a first press to be blanked, and then moved to a second press to be stamped. The panels are then moved to a new location where they are loaded onto a fixture that holds the panels in the correct assembled orientation. Each corner is then welded either manually or robotically. The corners contain intricate profiles which add complexity to the welding operation. The welded shell is then moved to a new location where each weld is manually rough ground. Because of the intricate profiles the grinding must be done at a slower pace to insure that only unwanted weld is removed. The shell is then placed on line where the corners are eventually manually finish sanded. All of these operations are labor intensive, and because of the repeated handling of the parts, the parts are susceptible to dents and dings. The welding operations require energy for the welder and consume welding wire. The grinding and sanding operations require energy, consume numerous sanding discs, and produce dust and debris.
It is therefore desirable to improve upon this current method of forming sheet metal casket shells by reducing the amount of raw material required to manufacture the casket shell and by reducing the number of manufacturing steps, particularly manual manufacturing steps, required to manufacture the casket shell.